The City
by illhousen
Summary: The city is built by people and needs people to exist, but it doesn't care about any single person. It's a great beast that grew bigger than human mind can fathom, and it imposes its own rules upon reality. Those rules, however, could be exploited by those foolish enough to try. AU. Urban-themed sorcery.
1. Chapter 1

Once the locker's door closed behind me, I sighed and pressed my hands against the wall, allowing creeping shadows to take me away.

I found myself in a familiar empty corridor. It was similar to the corridors in school, only it looked like it was abandoned for many years. It wasn't the decay but the lack of decay. Thousands tiny imperfections you would expect from a place visited by many people every day - a small crack in the wall where somebody threw something heavy, a mark on the floor where ink was split and not washed properly, footprints left by dirty boots, a forgotten book lying around, a cigarette carelessly thrown away - could not be found here. Everything was smooth and gray, eroded into near perfection by dust and time.

There was no light, but I didn't need light to see in this place.

I spent a few moments looking at myself, judging the damage done to my clothes by the contents of the locker. I sighed again, inhaling stale air smelling of old things, and listened. In a far distance I heard music. A quiet haunting melody promising rest and peace. Following it was to invite death.

I started to walk towards its source.

The corridor twisted and turned according to a plan I couldn't fathom. One time it ended in a flight of stairs going down, leading to another flight of stairs going up, as if something enormous was pressing down on the corridor, bending it out of shape. With each step the music was becoming louder. It was changing, too, becoming more urging. I was noticed by its creator, there was no doubt of it.

I found the source of the music by a window - a rare sight around here, though this one didn't show anything but darkness yet.

Before me was a construct of flesh and metal. Viscera served as its strings, rusted pipes played the role of flutes. A face was stretched think, reminding me more of a parchment than skin. There was no blood, the creature has long dried out.

It looked at me with glass eyes borrowed from a toy, and I clasped my hands together, pulling them apart before the creature could attack me. Neon fire danced on my palms, cold and fake.

The music stopped.

"Give me life," the creature said, its voice clashing with the appearance, a voice of an old kind lady. "I will serve you."

I nodded, snuffing the fire. I undressed then, not taking my eyes from the creature, and threw my clothes at it. It caught them, its limb having both bones and metal stings in place of fingers, and swallowed into the core of its being, where leathery membranes moved unevenly.

My clothes were spat out soon enough, no trace of blood or other liquids on them now.

"There is more from where I came. Life freely given," I said. "Can you follow my trail?"

"Yes," the creature said.

I stood still while it moved, unfolding its body, creating a hole in the center so as not to touch me moving around me in the narrow corridor. I turned around and watched it crawl away, towards the locker. The walls there should be thin enough for it to snatch the contents.

I sighed again as the creature turned a corner. Perhaps what I gave it was enough for it to reach completion and escape this place. Then I'd have to deal with it.

Then I dressed up, my clothes dry and gray.

As I started to walk again, away from my locker and the creature, I heard steps following me. I didn't turn to look. The one following me could be seen only in the corner of an eye.

"Using the dead to do your choirs?" a voice asked from behind. The voice belonged to neither man nor woman. It didn't sound old or young. It wasn't a voice of somebody. It was the voice of nobody.

"I shouldn't do even that much," I said.

"It's useless to hide," the voice said. "Brockton Bay knows you. Your name is in the graffiti across the city. Your face can be seen in the white noise on television. Phantoms target you already. They are unfocused, uncertain, but with each day their attention would be drawn to you more and more. You must stake a claim before the city claims you, before you are reduced to lurking in the corners."

"Like you," I said.

"Yes. Others will notice you soon, too. Hesitation is fatal."

Others. The Merchants who had the power over lost things and made lost people. It was no wonder they were the most powerful cabal in the city, claiming a large territory as their own and leaving only scraps to the rest. The Empire with their power over crowds. My social standing was a mess, so it would take them very little effort to turn my peers actively hostile to me. Lung and his people didn't have one of us, to my knowledge, but they had to know something to survive for so long. Then there was Coil, about whom I didn't know much at all - a divination of teddy bears' inside showed only useless glimpses. Most likely he was working through the city itself, controlling surveillance systems, turning advertisements into tools of brainwashing, twisting streets into labyrinths.

All of them would soon be looking for me. Either to kill or to enslave.

I didn't like to admit it, but my companion was right. I've waited too long.

"The city is divided already among powers greater than me," I said. "Where do I stake the claim?"

"There are always overlooked places and overlooked people," the voice said. "Start with them."

* * *

I stood on the other side of a mirror, waiting patiently for Madison to arrive.

When she walked into the bathroom, I took place of her reflection.

"Tay-" she started to say.

I bashed the mirror with a steel pipe - one of my tools of power - sending glass shrapnel across the room and hitting Madison right in the head. Other people would see her skull cracking, blood and bits of tissue splattering everywhere. I saw a porcelain doll breaking, red velvet ribbons falling out from the crack.

Madison was a phantom, a fake person the city created to fill the void left by real people disappearing. There were a lot of them around lately.

I stepped through the mirror into the bathroom and knelt near Madison. Inside her skull I put a lock of my hair, patching the crack with a strip of cloth. On her eyes I placed glass contacts made by myself. There was a bit of my blood mixed into them.

That should be enough for the city and others to lose my trail for some time.

The task done, I walked away, carefully avoiding looking at the mirror shards lest they would foretell my doom.

* * *

I needed people on my side. All of my enemies had followers, and I couldn't survive alone. Not for long. Building a cabal from scratch was too slow, especially considering my standing, and too noticeable. So, one of the established groups, one lacking someone like me, was my goal.

The Undersiders were promising. They were a relative unknown, but operated for long enough to start getting glimpses of the big picture. Watching them through the eyes of pigeons has confirmed my guess. They were on a verge of discovering the underside of the city. In other words, they were on a verge of being consumed. They needed someone like me, and I needed them.

And so I stood inside their lair. Tracking the building down was easy, pigeons saw all kinds of things.

I wore no costume and no mask - either would be too dangerous in my position, too much the city could use against me - but a few mirrors were glued to my gray clothes to reflect blows should they come.

Waiting for the Undersiders to return, I occupied myself by studying pictures on the doors to their rooms. At first they scared me, being similar to the signs of power in design, but eventually I concluded they were just pictures. Someone on the team had a potential to become one us, most likely.

I heard footsteps and voices coming from the entrance and turned to face my new team.

They stopped abruptly once they saw me, a girl in a fur jacket growling, a tall boy rising his fists in preparation for a fight.

I looked at a blonde girl.

"You wanted to find out what was going on in the city," I said. "I have found you first."


	2. Chapter 2

"Now, I don't know who you are and how you've found this place, but..." the tall boy, Grue, said.

"Wait," Tattletale said, placing her hand on his shoulder. She looked at me with hunger in her eyes I recognized from my own reflection.

I clasped my hands together and slowly drew them apart. Neon fire danced on my palms. Tattletale gasped.

"So, she can conjure fire," a pretty boy, Regent, said to Tattletale. "What's the deal here?"

Tattletale waved him off, looking intensely at the flames.

"You are a Thinker, yes?" I said. She nodded. "You can see more than others. Things that don't match. People disappearing only to reappear later, their mannerisms and personalities slightly changed. Graffiti no one drew. Birds falling from the sky. Blood spilling during a car crush to form a blueprint of a building that doesn't exist. A street longer on one side than the other. Any of those things could be explained by a weird coincidence or a parahuman power in play. Together, however, they reveal something else."

"And you know what?" she asked.

I smiled.

"Yes. My name is Taylor Hebert. Does it ring any bells? Look at my face, is it familiar to you?"

Her eyes widened in recognition. I had her. Regent, too, fell silent.

The girl in the fur jacket, Bitch, growled again.

"What the fuck it's about?" she asked. Then she turned to Grue. "Should I fuck her up or what?"

"Bad places," I said. "Smelling of dust and death. The ones dogs refuse to go into."

I have seen her through pigeons' eyes taking care of some dogs in an abandoned building. Perhaps she knew what they knew or at least some fragments of it.

"What about them?" she asked, her voice calmer now.

I brought my steel pipe to my mouth and breathed into it, caressing old bloodstains with my fingers. The pipe produced the haunting melody of the dead. Light in the room grew dimmer, one of the windows showing a different picture than before. The creature of strained flesh and rusted metal that drunk the blood from my clothes could be seen on the other side. It looked at me, producing the same haunting melody, two tunes becoming one.

I stopped playing, and the room returned to normal.

"What the-" Grue started to say. Darkness swelled around him, ready to consume the world.

"I know of them," I interrupted him, talking to Bitch. "You are close to finding them on your own. They are impossible to avoid, with your line of work. Stumbling upon one could be fatal. I can offer protection, guidance, answers. To avoid such places, and to deal with others using them. Drug addicts carrying magpies inside their bellies, lynch crowds controlled by the Empire, litter hiding traps - I know of those things and more. I can arm you against them."

"And what do you want in return?" Tattletale asked.

"Bodyguards," I said. "There are people who would target me. I need to establish myself as someone who won't go down easily. I would also need your help to claim a domain from the city. You would benefit from that too, as it would create a safe haven."

The Undersiders exchanged looks.

"We need to talk about it," Grue said.

I nodded. They didn't have much choice, without one of us on their side, and I thought Tattletale smart enough to realize it.

* * *

 _ **The**_ _weather is nice today,_ a street artist thought setting up his stand.

 _I'll be the_ _ **first**_ _to admit, he can be a dick sometimes, but he's my friend,_ a young boy thought walking down a street.

 _It's hard to tell if I'm up to the_ _ **task**_ _,_ a businessman thought driving an expensive car and ignoring the view outside.

 _I'm not the one at fault here. She_ _ **is**_ _forcing my hand,_ a woman thought carrying a knife.

 _ **Complete,**_ I thought returning to my body lying in my bed.

It took two days of preparations. The Undersiders were busy walking around the neighborhood and offering free drinks to the local residents. Tattletale and Bitch were especially good at that. tattletale by virtue of being able to talk anyone into drinking, and Bitch by virtue of threatening them with dogs if they didn't comply. Each drink contained tiny glass shards, polished and enchanted to not be noticeable and to not harm people consuming them.

Marking each window in the neighborhood would have taken far too much time and effort, but now as people with shards inside walked around, each window that captured their reflections was mine for the taking. And through windows more people could be influenced, becoming my carriers.

Now I was inside of them, hiding in their thoughts, looking through their eyes and hearing with their ears. I could even control them. The control was limited, but it had to do. With time, their thoughts would turn to murder, their targets - local phantoms. One element of the city's influence removed from the picture.

That alone wouldn't be enough to tear a part of the city out of its clutches and claim as my own, but it was a good start.

At that moment I felt my hair inside Madison's skull burning, my blood in her contacts freezing. An unmistakable feeling of my life being taken briefly overtook me, and then it was gone. Madison was no more, killed by one of the dead undoubtedly sent by one of my enemies. I was discovered. At least it meant they still underestimated me. The dead were no more than pests to those of us who knew what they were doing.

Still, it meant I had to accelerate my plans.

First, though, there was a task I've put away for far too long.

Cutting ties.

I stood up and walked into the basement where I had found my companion and have created a pathway to my temporary workshop.

* * *

I was standing in my father's room, watching him sleep. Briefly I considered waking him up, telling him everything, asking for his help. Perhaps such a decision even had merit. He was a union leader, and that could be used to gain some leverage against the city and my enemies.

But no, the decision I've made was the best for both of us.

Silently I walked closer to him. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes for a few moments.

It was for the best.

In my swift motion I raised a glass knife above my head and brought it down to my father's chest. The glass broke, and for a moment I could see my face reflected in dozens of shards, frozen in a silent scream. Then it was gone.

Reality is given to us in our perception. Each of us carries a world inside our head with everything we knew about reality reflected in those models. The glass knife has killed my image inside my father's head. He won't forget me, but he won't care anymore.

I saw him stirring and opening his eyes. He looked at me, at the shards of glass, confused.

"Taylor?" he said, his voice apathetic. "Go to sleep."

I nodded, turned around and walked away, not intending to return.

There was no place for me in his reality.


	3. Chapter 3

I was walking down a dark corridor. Its emptiness couldn't be described properly.

The dark corners of the city were formed from forgotten places. A room of a dead family member left untouched, never visited. Eventually the family died, their children inherited their house, yet still didn't visit the room. Not out of respect this time, but of tradition. With time, the room was forgotten and fell through the cracks of reality. An unfinished office building, once a home for many dreams and aspirations, condemned to half-life by the lack of money. Once the memories of its purpose faded, once it became a mere feature of the neighborhood, once people stopped paying attention to it, it was gone.

Such places were the building blocks of the corners, a foundation used by the city to spin its endless labyrinths hidden from all but the wise and the unlucky. The dead lurked here, craving for their lost life, and fed on life not their own. Any distinguishable features, any intelligent designs, any signs of life were devoured, leaving nothing but gray behind.

Perhaps soon I would join them.

"You have waited too long," my companion said behind me, the voice barely audible over the haunting melody of the dead.

"I know," I said.

"It would have been... Not easy, but more manageable to claim the territory before you were noticed."

"I know."

"You know what that means."

"Yes. Nine corners. Five would be claimed, four warded. The city would probably be satisfied with the arrangement."

The voice didn't answer. For the rest of the way the haunting melody was the only sound breaking the silence.

* * *

The dead has swelled in size since I last saw her. She was gorged on blood and life it represented, some color returned to her face, the body became more organic, more functional. Wires were replaced by pulsating veins, eyes glittered, smeared with dark liquid.

She recognized me even without the neon fire or music of the pipe. She stopped playing her melody and looked at me, waiting.

I pointed at the rusty pipes decorating her spine.

"Four of them," I said. "And your debt will be paid."

She nodded, and the pipes fell on the floor. Loud cracks originating inside of her could be heard, her body convulsed, wet gaping noises filled the air, and then she was still again.

I waited until she picked up the pipes and handed them to me. I put them in an old trunk which contained all of the things I decided to take with me from my home in preparation for a new life. Surprisingly few, as it happened.

The dead watched them with hunger in her eyes. I closed the trunk and conjured a flash of neon fire on my palm to remind her of where we stood. She backed off.

I sighed. The easiest part done. It was hard to properly prepare the pipes. The ones taken from the dead were inferior, but they would be used for only one task. They had to do.

I walked towards the dark window and breathed at it until the darkness parted to reveal a familiar street. I stepped through the glass holding a hand over my heart so as not to allow any poisonous shards to pierce it.

The street was crowded, but nobody paid me any attention. At first. As I continued to walk, I started to notice faces turning my way. All of them wore the same empty expression. Phantoms. I fastened my steps.

One of the phantoms pushed me, and I felt a blade piercing my flesh. One of the mirrors hidden under my jacket shattered, and it was the phantom who fell on the ground with a deep wound in his stomach, not me. Even though I knew I was unharmed, my hand instinctively went to the place where the wound should be. I walked as fast as I could without running, trying and failing to control my breath.

A few bystanders shouted and tried to get to the dying phantom, but the crowd trapped them within itself and carried away.

I noticed the world growing darker, shadows deepening, the street becoming less crowded. Whiffs of smog appeared in the air, grasping at my legs. I cursed and turned back. It was an entrance to a trap street, a place that didn't exist outside of some maps.

The city knew me. It wanted me. Its actions were clumsy, unfocused, a great beast stirring in its sleep, swatting at an annoying fly. With time, I knew, they would become much more dangerous.

I had so little time left.

* * *

"Run it by me again," Brian said.

I avoided meeting his eye and looked at the fruits of my labor instead. Everything was as ready as it could be. Eight points around the Undersiders' lair were marked with symbols of power. Alec did them, he was a better artist than me. A blueprint of the lair with only outer wall and nine dots that could be mistaken for random, the rest of it empty, hang above the entrance. Lanterns decorated windows, their light broken by diagrams on their stained glass.

"We have to accelerate our plans," I said eventually. "Our enemies made their first move."

"We didn't have enemies before you arrived!" Brian barely managed not to shout.

"We did," Lisa said. "We just didn't know about them. Trust me, the pieces are falling into place. She is what I was missing ever since I've gained my powers."

Brian faced her.

"How does it make sense?! It's all just... just magic mumbo-jumbo! Living cities, fake people, invisible enemies... Damn, I can't believe we are going along with it. I mean, sure, there is a lot of weird shit around, with powers affecting everything, but that... There have to be limits, right?"

"You may think about it as a particularly potent and weird parahuman power if it helps you," I said. "And perhaps it's even true. It's not impossible that there is a person somewhere in Brocton Bay twisting the city in a shape of his or her mind. And perhaps people like me are just more attuned to this new reality, able to figure out and exploit the rules. In the end, it's just a matter of semantics."

"Brian," Lisa said. "You've seen what she can do. And there are other people who can do the same and more. We have to be prepared."

Brian took a deep breath.

"I know. It's just..." He sighed. "What did you want us to do, again?" he asked me.

"I want you to walk inside, following the light and not venturing into the darkness, find a room that looks familiar to you, meet a person, most likely someone you love, and kill them with a pipe," I said. "They're fake," I added. "Smash them, and they'll break into pieces."

Brian gave me a look.

"And that would help you?"

"That will help us," I said. "The initial plan was for me to claim the area around our lair, but it takes time. The building would have to do for no, and the nine corners ritual is the fastest way to do it. We'll get a safe haven from our enemies, even if it's only a building for now."

Brian sighed again.

"Let's just do it," he said.

I nodded. He walked towards the building, stopped at the entrance and stayed still, breathing deeply for a few moments. Eventually he stepped inside, disappearing from view.

"Finished talking?" Rachel asked, looking up from her dogs.

"Yes," I said. "You know what to do?"

"Yeah," she said.

I nodded again. "Go, then."

She walked straight into the building without hesitation.

"Hey," Alec said. "What if, hypothetically, one of us doesn't love anyone? Who would he... or she meet?"

I shrugged. "Someone who would make the most psychological impact. Or maybe nobody. If that happens, just stay in the room and try to look cute."

He smiled. "That I can do."

He walked inside, whistling an annoying tune and playing with his pipe.

When he disappeared from few, Lisa suddenly hugged me with one hand. I stiffened under her touch, and she smiled. I scowled.

"They will do it," she said. "Brian may complain a lot, but that's because he has the most normal life of all of us. The transition is hard for him. Yet even he can see what we all see. The truth beneath the surface. He'll come around."

"Thanks," I said quietly.

She grinned. "You still owe us for this," she said and walked inside.

"Yeah," I said to the darkness. "I do."

I held my breath and stepped inside, entering a cage of light.

Or perhaps a diagram. The colored light from the lanterns formed an intricate design on the floor, a gestalt map of a place that didn't exist yet.

The light couldn't break the darkness surrounding the rainbow lines, for there was nothing to illuminate. What was outside the design didn't exist. For the most part. Something moved in the darkness, something wet and warm brushed against my arm that was too close to the edge of the safe area. I put it away and started to walk.

It wasn't long before I reached a door to my room. The place around me was slowly taking form. I could almost hear familiar noises of my home: creaks from the roof, dripping of water from the bathroom, whistle of wind that I've heard falling asleep so many times before... I clutched my pipe and walked inside, facing the person who has started it all. My mother.

"Taylor," she said, looking away from a TV set and noticing me. She was smiling, she was alive, she was here, she was with me again.

She wasn't real.

She said something else, but I didn't listen. Breathing heavily, my vision blurry with tears, I raised my pipe.

Then I froze. There was no TV set in my room.

Still holding the pipe high, I jumped towards the TV, pushing my mother out of the way. I saw white noise forming a vague misshapen face.

"Thomas Calvert," the TV set said, stopping my attack. "Pleased to meet you. Though you may better know me as Coil."

Names had power. It was easy to kill nameless things. No so much with those whose names you knew, not when they knew how to introduce themselves. The effect wouldn't last long, but the ritual was delicate, and any interruption could be disastrous.

"What do you want?" I hissed.

"Nothing much." His tone was relaxed, indulgent. "Just claim what is mine. You see, I am the one who created the Undersiders. They are bound to me, and now that they bind this building to themselves, and you to them, isn't it only natural that I would take an interest?"

"I didn't see any marks of binding on them. No tools of trade, either," I said desperately hoping it was all a bluff, some kind of trick.

"You wouldn't," Calvert said. "They are in credit card numbers. Come now, you should know that the beast would have devoured me if I didn't have the right to be here."

"Shit," I swore and ran into the darkness.

For the Undersiders being bound in such a manner meant little. Calvert could influence and manipulate them in subtle ways, but for me not to notice any signs must mean that the relation was distant, relatively weak. But if he corrupted the ritual, if he claimed the building when I was claiming it...

I would belong to him.

Invisible limbs tried to grab me. I conjured neon fire, and they backed off, but I knew it wouldn't hold them off for long.

Something big moved ahead of me, its form almost visible in traitorous light, and I ducked low to avoid it.

I reached a richly decorated room where Lisa was sitting, her face hidden behind her hands.

A pile of broken pieces that were once a boy was lying before her, a noose being the most striking detail among them.

"Taylor?" Lisa asked, and her voice cracked. She was crying.

"Do you truly want to abandon the ritual now and deal with the beast?" Calvert asked from a TV set behind her. "You won't survive. Enslavement is a better alternative."

I didn't stop and ventured into the darkness once again. The beast has found me right away, the neon fire didn't stop its attacks anymore, there was nowhere to dodge, for the darkness was filled with flesh and teeth.

I pushed against it, moving as fast as I could towards the next room, and the mirrors glued to my clothes shuttered one by one. Once the last one was gone, my arm exploded with pain. I screamed, falling on the ground, rolling and forcing myself to stand up, to enter the next room. Neon fire erupted from the stump that was my left arm a second ago, closing a wound and permanently creating a weakness my enemies could exploit, but I didn't have time for better options.

Once I could see again, not blinded by the pain and light, I saw Alec looking at me in shock, a piece looking just like his face lying before him.

"I hope you see now that you are behaving unreasonably," Calvert said. "I have many uses for someone with your talents. You can be assured of your future."

I ran again, slower this time, knowing that I probably won't survive the trip to the next room. In the end, I have waited too long. I've exhausted my options, or perhaps was too blind to see good ones. The city will claim me soon.

But damn if I was going down without a fight.

I braced myself, preparing to face the best, and then a stone pillar erupted from the ground, pushing a part of the beast up, giving me enough room to avoid it.

I frowned. What was it? Calvert's trick? No, it didn't feel right, he shouldn't have that kind of power here yet.

No matter, there wasn't time for it.

The next room was wrong. Its walls were polished stone, torches hang on even intervals, creating more shadow than light, a statue of a woman unfamiliar to me stood tall and proud at the center. There was no TV set.

Rachel was standing near it, a pile of pieces that was once a dog was lying under her feet.

She grunted when she saw me. I didn't stop.

More stone pillars rose around me, creating a path leading to the next room, which was a combination of an average living room, not unlike my own, and the weird and wrong stone temple erupting around.

Brian was there, standing in place, breathing heavily and clutching the pipe in his hands. A young girl stood against him in a corner, a look of horror frozen on her face.

"Stop!" I gasped, falling on my knees.

He turned around, rising the pipe as if to strike, then saw me and froze in place.

"Taylor," he said. "I... I can't..."

"It's fine," I said, taking my breathing under control. "You don't have to anymore."

The pipe fell from his hands, and he leaned tiredly against a wall, burying his face in his hands.

"It appears that a third options has opened to you," Calvert said, his voice tense.

I turned to look at his blurry face.

"Yeah?" I said.

"Indeed. Take care of the target here. I'll take care of yours. That would eliminate you as a threat while preserving your autonomy."

I frowned, quickly calculating the balance of power in play. A shared dominion. By surrendering one of his pieces to me while getting personally involved in my steed, he would acknowledge me as his partner in the context of the ritual. Which meant I wouldn't be able to act against him without damaging my territory and leaving myself open to the city. The same technically applied to him, but he didn't need this building or what would be built using it as a foundation, he had his own domain. It was better than either of my recent options, but...

"And why would I do that?" I asked. "When I have a benefactor on my side."

"Do you want to trust someone who can intrude into the nine corners ritual with your domain and your life?" Calvert asked back.

I scowled but remained silent.

"Fine," he said. "I'll throw in an additional favor. Accept my offer, and I will engage the Empire, distracting them from you and giving you enough time to set up."

"You are in a war with the Empire as it is."

"A war I can postpone with minimal losses."

I looked around. The room was slowly changing, stone crippling inside, torches lighting up, surrendering the place to shadows.

I sighed. The intruder was a complete unknown to me. They seemed benevolent, but that could be said about many things in the city. Better the devil you know.

"Fine, we have a deal," I said rising the pipe to strike at the girl.


	4. Chapter 4

Now that the ritual of the nine corners was complete, the changes made by the intruder has vanished, and the rooms, five in total, were connected by corridors arranged in a spiral. The room at the entrance to the lair was mine, the room at the center belonged to Calvert. Rooms between those two bore signs of both, colors clashing, furniture of different styles creating a contrast where there shouldn't be one.

It disturbed me, and not only because of the evidence of power Calvert held over me. It reminded me of a story about Amanda Holloway, a woman who was consumed by the city and became its chief architect. She was the one who created the red brick house, a place of many rooms or only of one room, depending on one's view. Those who ventures inside found themselves in a pleasant living room filled with signs of life. As they ventured further following turns and twists of empty corridors, they encountered the same room over and over again, each the same, each subtly different. Colors became off, furniture crowded, forcing visitors to find their way around it, bloodstains marked yellow wallpapers, invisible if one wasn't looking for them. With each iterations the changes became more pronounced, culminating in complete rejection of ordinary reality and leading visitors to the underbelly of the city. Or perhaps into its stomach. They were never seen again, the story survived only in whispers lingering in the corners.

It was not a pleasant comparison, considering there now were four rooms which I dared no enter, a bribe to the city to leave me be for a time, a part of the city used for functions I couldn't yet comprehend.

If there was one silver lining to the situation, it was the access to Calvert's room. By the patterns of dust, by the angle of the window, by the composition of furniture and by many other signs I studied his style as one of us. I didn't like what i saw.

He was perfect.

The nature of the city and its secrets could be summarized in one paradox: it needed people to exist but cared not for them. It couldn't survive without hands to build and repair, bodies to occupy houses, minds to plan the layout. But any individual person didn't matter. The city would live without the current mayor, without that friendly police officer living across my - former - home, without Principal Blackwell, without anyone I could name. Even people who contributed to it, like my dad fighting for the fate of the Docks, were expendable. Everyone was.

Calvert understood it well. When he looked around, he didn't - and perhaps couldn't - see people. He saw tools which he could use to remake the city in his image, a goal of all of us. Each of his employees was but a part of a greater whole, a cog in the machine built by Calvert and tuned to perfection, ready to be turned just right to set in motion his great designs.

I envied him that clarity. All of us were people trying to think like the city, and Calvert has advanced further than most on that path.

Of course, the source of his power was also concealing his weakness. Parahumans were the antithesis to the ways of the city. Defined by their deviations from the norm, they were hard to be made a part of a crowd or a statistical number. The Empire was a good example of that, hemorrhaging capes almost as fast as recruiting new ones. That was also likely the reason why Calvert didn't work closely with parahumans, keeping the Undersiders at arm's length.

If I hoped to stand a chance against Calvert, I had to work with other people. With other individuals.

That was the reason why I didn't snap when Brian walked into Calvert's room and interrupted my musings.

"Not much of a payoff considering the effort, huh?" he said behind me.

"The rooms can be changed, expanded," I said continuing t study the yellow wallpaper.

"Not what I meant."

"It's a safe haven from the city. The forces at play won't touch it. We've bought time and a room to breathe."

He grabbed me by the shoulder and forced to face him.

"You keep saying this stuff about forces and powers and the city and all that, but I-"

"Brian." Lisa appeared at the door. She must have followed Brian from whenever the Undersiders were discussing the recent events.

Brian was silent for a few moments, his gaze moving from me to Lisa and back. Eventually he sighed and released his grip on me.

"I need some air," he said and walked out. Lisa stepped aside to let him pass.

Once his steps could no longer be heard, she turned to me biting her lip.

"Look," she started to say.

I shrugged. "I would have left you if I knew you are working for Calvert."

"Still," she said. "I am sorry."

I sighed. "You were desperate to get some answers. He has a hold on you the nature of which you don't fully understand. When I appeared on the stage, you thought I was your ticket out of it, the answer to your problems. Honestly, I get it. There is no need to apologize."

Lisa relaxed a little, leaning against the wall.

"So," she said, "hat now?"

I considered what to say. I needed to cultivate some level of trust in the Undersiders, but how much of my plans could I tell them? Calvert had a hold on them, one bound by money and identity. It couldn't be a strong hold, but he could still use it against me. Still, I needed allies against him and the city. I could play up my mystery for only so long.

"Calvert will move against me," I said eventually. "Not right now, but soon. I will try to move against him. Can't do that openly, though, not without damaging this place and becoming vulnerable to the city. I would need to either establish a new domain, away from this place, or... use proxies." I looked at her.

She nodded, and a fracture of weight I didn't know I was carrying has lifted from my heart.

It lasted only a moment before I heard a scream.

Picking up my steel pipe, I rushed towards the entrance.

Darkness has concealed two rooms closest to the exit, Alec and Rachel were sitting in one of them, uselessly staring ahead of them. It was my place now, however, so I didn't need light to see.

I saw Brian on the floor, trying to stand up while not leaving his eyes from a figure just beyond the door. The figure was tall and misshapen. Two or three dead and decaying bodies - one human and one or two dogs - were pressed together to form a mockery of a humanoid shape. They were covered in dirt and litter which were concealing their features while holding them together.

I couldn't smell death, for the smell of trash was far too strong.

I gasped, unable to help myself. The figure before me, a roadkill, was the work of the Merchants. If they were on the move against me already...

I squeezed my pipe tighter and walked towards the roadkill, trying to keep my composure.

"You have no power here," I said keeping my voice firm. "Leave."

Dog's maw snarled, human mouth following after a moment.

"My Queen will own you like she owns all things broken and forgotten," the human mouth said, the dog's maw trying to replicate the words with whines and howls. "But not today. Today she invites you to Somer's Rock as one of her peers."

"What for?" I asked.

"Is not for me to know," it said.

She knew who I was, she knew where I lived. She could tell it to others if she so desired. Hiding was not an option anymore, not that it did me much good before. And if I were to introduce myself to the rest of us, being invited by her was not a bad option. I would no longer be underestimated, however, but Calvert knew me already and I trusted him to keep his promise to distract Kaiser since it was in his interests as well. Lung wasn't a factor in this war, and with lesser forces I could deal.

What has decided the deal for me was the invitation itself, however. She wouldn't invite me there just for some chitchat. Something important was about to start, and I had to be a part of it if I ever were to be a part of the city.

"I'll be there," I said.

The roadkill nodded. Its bodies twisted in its dirty carcass, turning around, and it limped away leaving trash behind.

"What..." Brian said behind me. "What was that?"

I turned and smiled at him.

"Payoff."

I needed to work more on this whole "winning their trust" thing.

* * *

Somer's Rock was a place beyond the reach of the city for it was its heart. Few people knew that now, but Brockton Bay has begun with that pub. It was the first building marking a transformation from a village to the true city. It didn't truly survive the passage of time, being burned down many years ago, but its shadow lingered at the edge of reality, unable to disappear as long as the city itself still lived. Stuck between being and not-being, it could only be accessed by those with the right knowledge, and only for an hour between two and three after midnight.

It was a neutral ground for people like us. Perhaps the only neutral ground. Starting something here was suicide.

I was sitting at the central table, waiting for the dead to fetch my drink. They were gathering in this place for an occasional slice of life the city would throw their way. Typically bits of consumed people.

I was studied by my peers and studied them in turn, looking at them with my own eyes for the first time.

Calvert looked like an attractive middle aged man in a pristine suit. Not his real body judging by a patch of cloth on his scalp with cracks spreading around it.

Kaiser was a heavy man clad in rusted metal armor. Slogans and swastikas crawled all over it, their movement hypnotizing people foolish enough to look at them for long.

Figures lingered in the shadows away from the central table. Followers of my peers and those who wished to have a place at our table but didn't have enough talent or clout. The latter category would most likely be consumed soon enough. By the city or one of us.

And then there was her. Sitting right against me, clad only in a mantle made of dead birds, their tiny bones cluttering with each movement. Her blonde hair was long, with cheap shiny jewelry woven into it, and her eyes were dark and inhuman.

The leader of the Merchants. The Magpie Queen. The one who claimed lost things as her dominion.

She terrified me. She fascinated me. I wanted to be her so badly, I could wore her skin as my clothes.

Our drinks have finally arrived. The Magpie Queen drank bird blood, unsurprisingly.

"Let's begin the meeting," she said after finishing her drink, a few drops of blood lingering on her already bright-red lips. "A new power has arisen in the city, and I am not talking about our new peer." She looked at me, her eyes unblinking, a faint smile like a bloodied knife, and for a moment I forgot how to breathe.

"Yes," Calvert said interrupting the moment. "New constructs appear in the city. Stairways to nowhere, walls looking like they were taken from corridors in an apartment building. Streets twist, leading people away from those additions to the city."

Kaiser nodded. "The number of phantoms is increasing. I had to purge my resources from a few of those parasites."

"Someone has interfered with my ritual of the nine corners," I said. "Unnatural alterations appeared in the claimed place, stone pillars pushed the beast around."

"Impossible!" Kaiser scoffed.

"Not impossible," the Magpie Queen said, and her long black nails left deep gouges in the wood of the table. "Someone has stolen a junkyard from the heart of my domain."

The room was silent after that proclamation. To steal a part of someone's domain... It was possible to erode the boundaries, to slowly push against the power of domain's owner and claim it for yourself, bit by bit. But to skip all that and go for something that was claimed and surrounded... It was unheard of. I didn't have a clue of how it could be done.

"It's fortunate," Calvert said. The Magpie Queen looked at him, not moving her eyes, only her head. "Now we have a place to look at instead of hunting shadows."

"I had sent a few of my possessions inside," the Magpie Queen said. "None has returned. Divination reveals nothing, either."

"As expected," Calvert said. "But perhaps the mystery would unravel against our collective effort. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we should put aside our personal agendas for the sake of dealing with this new factor."

He looked around the room, and I nodded. After some hesitation Kaiser did the same.

"Then it's decided," the Magpie Queen said. "I'll take care of Lung. It has to affect him and his people too, and if not, the threat of our alliance will."

"And I'll persuade the Protectorate to not get in our way," Calvert said. "Now, while the junkyard would be the center of our attention, we should watch the rest of the city, too. It could be merely a distraction, even if it's hard to believe..."

The rest of the meeting we spent hammering down details and assigning duties. The Magpie Queen was pleased to learn that I were adept in using glass, for it meant I could create a construct allowing for our communication and collective rituals without the need to gather in one place and risk exposing all of us to the unknown threat.

And I was rather pleased to receive her approval.

"You do know that they are all plotting to backstab each other, right?" Lisa said once we walked out of the pub.

"Yeah," I said. "I'll be looking for an opening, too. But what we face is important and most likely very dangerous. I don't think they would start anything before we know..."

I trailed off noticing a very pale blonde girl standing at a corner of an alley and trying to be discreet as she watched Somer's Rock. I thought I recognized her from somewhere, though I couldn't be certain.

I frowned, trying to puzzle out her identity, when she noticed me. Her face became a mixture of fear and determination as she marched towards me.

"Glory Girl?" Lisa asked incredulously.

"You are Taylor Herbert, right?" the girl asked me, looking me straight in the eye as if afraid to look away.

"Hebert, actually," I said.

She gulped. "Sorry. My sister... She saw your name and your face. In the signs across the city, I mean. She described you to me. Told me you're new, not yet a part of them. Talked about this place, too. What it is, what's it used for. Never ventured inside, though."

I frowned. Another person like me? No, I should have noticed if someone else was active. A connection to that new threat?

"What do you want, exactly?" I asked. "Why are you here?"

Her expression cracked, exposing raw emotions too intense to read.

"She... She's disappeared. My family... They don't even talk about it. They say..." She stopped talking abruptly, closing her eyes and breathing heavily for a few moments. She seemed to regain some control of herself as she said, "Please, I need your help. You are my only hope."


	5. Interlude

.

 **Interlude**

Amy didn't see her father often. He was usually busy in his office, drawing blueprints and new maps of the city as it will be in the future.

She didn't mind, though, because when he did come out of his office, he would always show her something amazing.

Once he gave her a butterfly made of wire and paper, but alive. Glowing with neon fire, it flied around their house for a whole month before breaking apart.

Father would point at it from time to time and say, "This is a harbinger of things yet to come. A city without mirrors."

Amy didn't understand what was so bad about mirrors, but if they have to go to make room for more neon butterflies, she was all right with it.

Once she asked her father to teach her how to create a butterfly, but he refused.

"Perhaps one day you would walk in my footsteps, build your own cocoon room," he said. "For now, though, it's too early for you to make enemies."

Sometimes father would invite guests in his office, men smelling heavily of smoke. Amy was ushered into her room on such days, and father was very careful not to let her eavesdrop. After the guests would leave, Amy sometimes heard explosions somewhere in the city. And on mornings after such meetings there would be silence between her parents, stretched to the point of ringing.

Amy didn't like the silence. She felt obligated to protect it, to walk on her tiptoes, to not speak, for if she broke it, something horrible would happen. She didn't know what.

She did like her father taking them to a restaurant with delicious food afterwards. Her mother would typically break the unnatural silence after a glass of wine, and that would mark the return to her normal life.

The familiar cycle of her life was broken on one such day.

Her mother had her glass of wine and opened her mouth to say something. Suddenly, her gaze fell on a window, and her eyes widened, face growing pale. For a moment she was frozen there, glass in her hand, mouth slightly open. Then she lunged at Amy, pressing her to the floor, covering her with her body.

The window exploded, Amy heard deafening noise and felt her mother shuddering, her grip on Amy tightening more and more until suddenly she went limp, pressing Amy down with all her weight.

Amy struggled for breathe, trying to push her mother away, not comprehending what was going on. She was released soon by her father, his face covered in blood, his teeth bared in a wild grimace.

"Jane," he whispered, holding her mother in his hands. "Jane, talk to me, please."

She was silent.

The rest of the day was a blur filled with people trying to comfort her and people asking questions. She couldn't remember it clearly, memories breaking apart, combining into a collage of blood, pain and cries.

She couldn't sleep that night. She couldn't face the dreams she knew would come. And so she walked down from her room to get a glass of water and watch wire figures crafted by her father dancing in the night.

She found her father sitting in his favorite armchair, staring at a window in which his reflection was passing around the room, murmuring something she couldn't hear.

He didn't look at her when she walked into the room. He didn't move at all.

For a few moment she just stood there, watching him watching their reflections: hers being as still as she was, his continuing to pace, carefully stepping around her reflection now.

It was a different kind of silence than the one familiar to her. This silence was heavy, and she felt it was swallowing her, devouring her mind bit by it, drowning her in its meaning. She had to break it, or she would break herself.

"Is..." she said, scared momentary by the sound of her own voice. "Is Mommy going to be fine?"

For a long terrifying moment her father didn't move. Amy thought that the silence has consumed him already, leaving only empty husk behind, like the dry and dead insects she sometimes found in the corners of her room.

But then he did look at her, and she saw neon fire in his eyes.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, she will be."

For the first time Amy noticed how cold and fake that fire was.

Her father disappeared for the next three days. She was cared for by one of his regular guests, a burly man with a scar crossing his face. He didn't speak much and was clearly uncomfortable around her. Sometimes he would pat her head when she cried, but mostly he was just preparing food and reminding her to go to sleep at evenings.

And then her mother was back. She was different. Her voice couldn't rise above a whisper anymore and her skin was thin and dry like parchment. Still, it was her mother, she was with her once more, and so Amy allowed herself to think everything can be all right again.

She just wished she could hug her mother without cutting herself.

* * *

Her father has changed, too. He no longer showed her any tricks. He spent even more time in his office than before, and each time she managed to see him, he was wearing more and more clothes. Business suit made wait for a long coat, he started wearing sunglasses, then a mask. He never removed gloves and heavy boots. None of that fit him, as if his proportions ceased to be that of a human. He moved around strangely, wavering and leaning against wall, like he was an animal trying against nature to walk as a man.

The men smelling of smoke were gone, their place taken by something that smelt of nothing at all. After its visits even familiar smells of the house would disappear.

Amy asked her mother what happened to her father once.

"He went to search for me," her mother said. "He has found more than me."

She didn't say anything else on the matter. If before there was a harmony between her parents broken by thin silence from time to time, now there was silence broken by shouts. Amy was forbidden from listening to those arguments, and she obeyed that rule gladly, sometimes even covering her head by a pillow to not hear her father's voice cracking like a static electricity.

One day, however, she couldn't help but hear what was said, so loud were the shouts.

"Everything I do I do with her in mind!" Her father's voice broke her sleep. "She is marked by my mistakes, but she can still walk away from it, as long as I complete the tasks that are mine!"

A whisper crept around the house, but Amy couldn't make out the words her mother said.

"Enough! I brought you here, and I can bind you!"

Another whisper, one saturated with fear that infected Amy.

Then a noise broke out, a sound of something breaking, a roar of a monster.

Amy lied in her bed, eyes tightly shut, and cried. She couldn't put it into words, but on some level she knew what was happening.

On the next day she found her mother reduced to a face pinned to a wall. She couldn't even whisper anymore, for her tongue was taken.

* * *

Her father retreated into his office for good, never leaving it now. Sometimes weird noises could be heard from behind the locked door, more often there was only dead silence. Often Amy didn't have anything to eat. She could easily solve the problem by knocking on the office door and asking for food, but that meant facing her father and witnessing his weird inhuman movements. Amy preferred to be hungry.

She still had to do it from time to time, of course, when the hunger was threatening to burn a hole in her belly. And she had to do it more often when the water in all of the pipes in the house turned into rust. She wondered if what she was going through was similar to what her father was going through, if he, too, had hunger that must have been sated, even if it meant doing something terrifying.

She told her theory to her mother, but her mother only smiled sadly.

Over time Amy has developed a system of communication with her mother: she would say a letter, and her mother would blink once or twice. If she blinked once, Amy would write down the letter. If she blinked twice, Amy would move to the next letter in the alphabet. In the end she would get a note dictated by her mother. The system was slow and monotone, it lacked empathy carried by human voice. But that was all Amy had during those days.

From those notes she's found out that her mother was hungry, too, and what she would like to eat. Since then Amy was feeding her mother pictures she drew herself: a happy family holding hands under a round sun, with a square house in the background. Each picture would turn to ash once it passed her mother's mouth, becoming a pile of gray. Sometimes Amy cried watching it.

* * *

One day, her father suddenly emerged from his office. Something must have been wrong with his legs because he crawled on the floor, resembling a grotesque lizard. There were holes in his clothes pierced by glass shards. His eyes were glass, too, a mad neon fire dancing inside.

Amy screamed and tried to run away, but despite his predicament, her father was fast and quickly cornered her.

He stood on his knees before her and placed his hands on her head, living scratches with his glass claws visibly forced into his fingers.

"Amy," he said with a heavy static in his voice. "My daughter. I have been neglecting you, but I have not abandoned you. There is so much to do, so many enemies to destroy, so many plans to execute... And so little time..."

He was rambling, his eyes looking through Amy, unable to see her over the neon fire.

"Do you still love your father?" he asked suddenly, focusing on her once more.

Amy didn't know what to say. She started to cry, but her tears were swallowed by the glass.

"It's fine if you hate me," he said. "Just know that I would never hurt you. Whatever will happen in the future, I will protect you. I promise you that."

With that he crawled back to his office, leaving Amy to shed her tears under a silent gaze of her mother's face on a wall.

The Dallons came three days later. They opened the office only to find her father dead, a glass knife piercing his neck.

* * *

Living with Dallons wasn't so bad. She was eating regularly now. Was going to school. They wanted to take her mother away at first, but she hugged the parchment face to her chest and refused to part with it even for a moment. In the end, she was allowed to hang it in her room. The Dallons didn't speak about it since then.

They didn't speak about many things. Amy sometimes saw strange signs in the graffiti and white noise of television. Things that she knew were related to her father's work. They called for her, seducing with promises of her mother's return, of power to contribute to her new family business and, more damnable than everything else, of understanding what happened to her father. She knew better than to follow them. She knew better than to try conjuring neon fire on her palms, so similar to the light associated with her family. But she couldn't help but acknowledge them, she couldn't help but want to talk about those things, to ask someone if that was how it was for her father, if he, too, could see things nobody else saw and followed them to the edge of the human world and beyond. But whenever she brought up the topic, the Dallons would fall silent. They didn't scold her, they didn't shout at her. They ignored her words, pretended there was nothing to see in the graffiti speaking of a new girl walking down the neon path, and somehow it was so much worse.

Her mother refused to discuss those things, too, pain clearly visible on her face, and soon Amy learned not to bring them up in their daily conversations.

Victoria was the only person to listen to her. She was terrified but also fascinated by the things Amy knew, by the secrets of the city deprived from all but a few people that grew their domains as a cancer slowly killing a great beast. In Victoria she has found her first friend. Sometimes she thought she may want their relationship to be something more than friendship, but she was too afraid of losing their connection, of losing the one person willing to listen about the dead lurking in the corners and pigeons serving as eyes of the gang leaders, to approach the subject.

Her life has settled into a new routine, and once again she allowed herself to think everything could be all right.

And once again the cycle was broken.

One day she was walking to school with Victoria when she noticed a roadkill ahead of them, with a few flies circling around it. At first she didn't pay much attention to the dead animal, merely averting her eyes from the unsightly visage. As they drew closer, however, a whole swarm of insects emerged from the decayed body. They circled around Amy, freezing her in place and cutting her off from Victoria. And as more and more flies emerged from the corpse, more than it could possibly contain, their buzz started to form coherent words.

"Do you still love me?"

Amy screamed.


End file.
